—The Chinese in San Francisco paid, in 1866-67, more than $42,000 in school taxes. California law omits Mongolian children from the apportionment of school funds, refuses them admission to the common-schools, and opens no schools for them. Thirteen hundred Chinamen have petitioned the Legislature for separate schools for their three thousand children of proper age. Such are provided for those of African and Indian descent. The petition was at once laid on the table. A leading paper stigmatized it as a dangerous and aggressive indication of a movement on their part to “obtain larger wages,” and showing a desire “to mingle their youth with ours, with a view, doubtless, to more thorough assimilation in the body politic.” And yet, the burden of the complaints against them has been that they will not assimilate, and will work cheap! If consistency is a jewel, it is evidently not a “California diamond.”
—A correspondent of the Intelligencer asserts that the opposition to the Chinaman is instigated mainly by the liquor-sellers and the Roman Catholic priests, neither of whom has John any use for, and whose patrons he displaces.
—A Chinese church is to be organized at Oakland, Cal., composed in part of members from Dr. Eells’ church, and the mission under the care of Rev. J. M. Condit. This is the second church in California, all the members of which are Chinese.
—Prof. Mooar in Evangelist: “Our greatest danger in regard to this problem is not that the Chinaman will be too pagan for us, but that we shall fail to be Christian enough for him.”
The Indian.
—A writer in the Advance says that there are 6,500 persons in the Indian Territory, formerly slaves of the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The treaty of 1866 provided for their citizenship among the tribes, and an allotment of fifty acres of land to each. In the first Indian Legislature after the treaty, a law was passed refusing to comply with the treaty; so that, in the land where they were born, and where they toiled in slavery to enrich their masters, they can own no land, cannot send their children to the nation’s schools, are not permitted to vote, and have no protection from, nor access to, the Indian courts of law. So, the big fish eat the little fish, all the way down.
—The various plans for organizing the Indian Territory under a territorial government, are in the face of solemn treaties, and the opposition of the various tribes to whom it has been promised. It is only another of the wrongs to which the poor Indian has been subjected by the cupidity of his white neighbors, and their disregard of the rights of so-called inferior races.
—The Bill creating the Territory of Oklahoma has been agreed upon by the House Committee on Territories.
—As to the rebel Indians, Gen. Sheridan allows a Nez Percés prisoner to go to the Canadian frontier, to offer immunity from punishment to the fugitives of that tribe, if they surrender to the military. Some have left Sitting Bull, and refused to fight with him longer. A band are raiding in Texas, in the neighborhood of Fort Ewell. The Bannocks at Lemhi Agency, in Idaho, complain that the agent has defrauded them, and threaten trouble. To Sitting Bull’s inquiries about peace, Gen. Miles answers that, when the Indians give up their ponies and guns, they will receive cattle and other property of greater value; and that when peace is made, the Government will provide for them, as it does for all friendly Indians.